Treaty of Waitangi
British interest in formal annexation grew through the 1830s as unregulated settlement, land speculation and the prospect of French claims made the existing situation untenable. Captain William Hobson was despatched to negotiate a transfer of sovereignty, and the treaty drafted in English was translated overnight into Maori by the missionary Henry Williams and his son. Roughly 540 rangatira signed copies carried around the islands over the following months; some declined outright, and the two texts were never reconciled. The discrepancy was not a minor translation slip but the hinge of the whole document. Where the English text has chiefs ceding 'all the rights and powers of Sovereignty', the Maori text has them ceding kawanatanga, a transliteration closer to governorship, while article two guarantees tino rangatiratanga -- full authority -- over their lands, villages and treasures. Successive colonial governments acted on the English reading, and large-scale land confiscation followed the wars of the 1860s. The treaty was largely ignored in law for over a century until the Waitangi Tribunal was established in 1975 to hear claims of breach, since when it has become the central instrument of Maori-Crown settlement.
- Year: 1840 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
